Beauty salon owner?

"You said you've been to Liangxi looking for her? Not a single clue?"

The two of them asked questions while taking notes, trying to be as thorough as possible.

"No, initially we were still texting, she said her phone earpiece was broken and she couldn't take calls. Later, I said I wasn't feeling well, so she should come back to see me, but she didn't even reply to texts. After that, there was no news at all, so I went to Liangxi to find her. I visited every beauty salon, big and small, but found nothing. Then I went to the police, and they also helped me search, but couldn't find her."

Chu Xiulan knew very little about her daughter's situation, especially regarding her boyfriend. She only knew he was a beauty salon owner and divorced, but not much else, not even his name, which seemed quite absurd.

It's not easy to find a suspect with just these few clues.

So the two took a blood sample from Chu Xiulan and brought it back.

Upon returning to Jinghai, they handed the biological sample over to the tech department to confirm the victim's identity.

Although a comparison was made earlier in the missing persons database, the comparison had errors and couldn't be used as evidence. New samples had to be taken for STR analysis to finally determine the mother-daughter relationship between the victim and the family.

After Li Xiang and the others returned, the squad gathered once more to discuss the next direction of the investigation.

"Is there anyone running a beauty salon in Liangxi on the list of 486 people provided by the Luoyang Police Station?"

According to previous judgments, the killer encountered the victim in Liangxi. Based on this principle, they did indeed identify the victim, pushing a fourteen-year-old case forward significantly.

At this point, by backtracking from the information obtained from the victim's family, it should be possible to learn relevant information about the killer.

"There isn't a single person among these 486 who runs a beauty salon in Liangxi."

After everyone's careful comparison, not only did the 12 with prior convictions come up empty, but even the remaining four hundred people had no one running a beauty salon in Liangxi.

"How can there be none?"

The case hit a snag, and Cao Gang was the first to question: "Could Chu Xiulan be mistaken? From what you said, she doesn't know much about the victim's situation. Is it possible the victim's boyfriend never ran a beauty salon?"

Only this explanation could account for why none among these more than four hundred matched the criteria.

"If not a beauty salon, what kind of shop then?"

"Are there any shop owners among these more than four hundred?"

"There are shop owners, including teahouses, foot massage parlors, and massage shops. There are a total of three with shops. I must say, the villages around Luoyang Reservoir do have quite the entrepreneurial spirit."

The people once again reviewed the situation of these more than four hundred people. Fourteen years ago, they had been major police investigation targets, but due to inability to confirm the source of the body and lack of evidence, it all ended without results.

As a result, the information recorded by the police on these more than four hundred individuals was still very complete.

"Three, right? Are any of these three divorced?"

Chu Xiulan had previously mentioned that her daughter's boyfriend was divorced, which was an important clue for them.

"He Jinfu, the owner of the foot massage parlor, is divorced and fits the bill."

"Alright, let's start with him for a secret investigation, but don't alert him for now. However, given that Chu Xiulan's clues might be inaccurate, we need to investigate the other two people as well, especially to see if they returned to Luoyang during that period and if they had the opportunity to commit the crime."

"Understood."

The squad members went over the clues again and clarified the next steps of the investigation. Although fourteen years had passed, the possibility of solving the case was now within reach, and everyone was raring to go.

"He Jinfu divorced in 2008, we can start by gathering information about him from the outside."

Having set a target, Li Xiang and the others split into two groups and returned to Liangxi to investigate He Jinfu from multiple angles. They first located his ex-wife to inquire about their divorce reasons and whether He Jinfu had any ambiguous relationships while running the foot massage parlor.

They then found friends he had for over twenty years to ask if they knew a girl named Liu Jie and showed them the photo for confirmation.

After two days of preliminary investigations, they temporarily ruled out He Jinfu as a suspect.

That left Li Xiang and the others to shift their focus to the next person, Luo Wenhui, the massage shop owner.

This man was 49 years old, married, and had a son who had already graduated. Although he didn't meet the divorced condition, Li Xiang and the team didn't give up and started a secret investigation on him.

To avoid startling him, they did not approach Luo Wenhui's wife first.

Instead, they began their investigation from outside his massage parlor. His shop had been operating for many years, with one batch of massage girls after another changing over time.

Through investigation, they learned that Luo Wenbin often stayed in Liangxi without going back home, while his wife took care of his parents back in Luoyang, and the couple had been living apart for over ten years.

One employee even voluntarily revealed: "Our boss has a mistress."

Mao Ji wasn't surprised, which boss doesn't have a mistress?

Living apart for so long without a mistress seemed statistically unlikely.

"Why doesn't his wife come over then?"

Li Xiang found it unbelievable. His wife was so trusting, letting her husband find a mistress while she took care of his parents at home. Is there really such a naïve woman in this world?

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